If you’re an avid user of Pandora or Last.fm and you find the “Loved Track” feature to be pretty useless, well not anymore! Favtape takes your loved tracks from Pandora or Last.fm and presents them in a Muxtape-like format. It’s absolutely brilliant, and a great way to show off your music tastes. If you’re curious, here’s my Last.fm loved tracks playlist at Favtape.
Update: Favtune updated shortly after this post with a new feature. You can now listen to Top and Recent lists on Last.fm. Very neat! Be sure to check out my top artists on Last.fm.
Girl Talk has released a new mashup album entitled Feed The Animals. Similar to how Radiohead sold their latest album, you can name your own price and get certain benefits depending on how much you pay. It’s available in both 320kbps and FLAC formats, and they will eventually make CD’s available.
Every NIN fan been dreaming of an instrumental album by Trent Reznor, and now finally we get one, and it’s consists of 36 songs spanning 2 hours! I’m going through it now and I just cannot contain my happiness at its awesomeness. Here’s more information:
Nine Inch Nails presents Ghosts I - IV, a brand new 36 track instrumental collection available right now. Almost two hours of new music composed and recorded over an intense ten week period last fall, Ghosts I - IV sprawls Nine Inch Nails across a variety of new terrain.
Trent Reznor explains, “I’ve been considering and wanting to make this kind of record for years, but by its very nature it wouldn’t have made sense until this point. This collection of music is the result of working from a very visual perspective - dressing imagined locations and scenarios with sound and texture; a soundtrack for daydreams. I’m very pleased with the result and the ability to present it directly to you without interference. I hope you enjoy the first four volumes of Ghosts.”
Get it from the official site or from Amazon MP3, which lets you preview each track for 30 seconds.
The first 9 songs on the album are free to download. The album is $5 for the complete collection, and you have a choice of MP3 (320kbps, DRM-free), FLAC, and Apple Lossless formats. You can also buy the CD for $10, or pay even more for limited-edition sets that give you the ability to remix any of these songs and distribute those songs. Since the album is under a Creative Commons license, here’s one of the songs for you to hear.
When talking about albums that are ahead of its time, many people think of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, The Flaming Lip’s Soft Bulletin, U2’s The Joshua Tree, Radiohead’s OK Computer, Massive Attack’s Blue Lines, or David Bowie’s Low. However, one of my favorite that has withstood the test of time and still to this day sounds ahead of its time is Nine Inch Nails’s Pretty Hate Machine.
The day I first heard it was also the day I played my first first-person shooter. I played Doom on the Sega CD (those were the days) while listening to this amazing album. It heralded an era of consistently excellent releases from Trent Reznor over the years, all the way up to the latest album, Year Zero.
With PHM, I love every single song a lot, so ordering them is like a parent having to choose a favorite child. You love each one in a unique way, but you can’t really rank them. However, That’s What I Get and Down In It seem to get a lot more listens from me.
Every once in a while, an album comes along that completely engulfs you and prevents you from enjoying other albums. You know, you hit the repeat all button on your MP3 player of choice and listen to an album over and over and over again. When you try to deviate, it sucks you right back in, holding you tight.
The album that is doing that to me right now is Muse’s Black Holes and Revelations. I thought I was done with the album, I’ve moved on into 2007’s lineup of great albums. But then someone mentions he saw them live and suddenly everyone is talking about how great the album is. Now here I am, listening to the album, again.
There’s always the story of how a band or individual that sold their soul to the devil to play great music. I think Muse went one step above that and sold their soul to God to play such awesome music. Muse’s music owns my face.
Here’s Starlight from the album, it’ll melt your face, too.
My Last.fm profile is now over 2 years old, meaning it has collected my listening habits for the past 2 years every time I play a song. The grand total, as of this writing, says that in that 2 year span I’ve listened to 20,657 songs. I put together a list of the Top 10 Most Listened Songs based on this information, and I’m glad to see how it illustrates how broad my listening taste is.
The Shins - Phantom Limb: This one surprised me, because even though I’ve liked a couple of Shins songs before, their newest album just blew me away. It came out of nowhere and dominated my playlist, and this song rocketed to the top of my most listened to list. I swear, my liking this song has nothing to do with the subject matter - two lesbians. Honestly!
The Hold Steady - Banging Camp: This was a weird one. I had not realized that I listened to this song so much until I saw it at the top of my list. “Huh.” I said. It’s a great song, and the fact that it has an AC/DC-like riff probably has something to do with it, as I always enjoy some good old AC/DC.
Neko Case - Hold On, Hold On: Another weird one for me. Seeing a pattern here? The thing is, I’m not big on country, but Neko Case’s voice latched onto me when I first heard her, and I was hooked ever since. In fact, Last.fm lists her as my most favorite artist. Oh, and she’s a sexy redhead, to boot.
Art Brut - Moving To L.A.: Like The Hold Steady, the lead singer doesn’t really sing, but talks in a conversational tone in their song. Art Brut is full of tongue-in-cheek songs dripping with irony, which is right up my alley, and Moving To L.A. is solid proof of that. And if you ever want to hear a humorous take on erectile dysfunction, their song “Rusted Guns of Milan” does just that.
Muse - Feeling Good: A great cover of Nina Simone’s song, Muse does it in their usual style of falsetto rock. I love the original, and I love this cover, as well.
Postal - Angel Pumping Gas: The lyrics is so utterly simple, yet perfect. I can vividly imagine myself taking place, a beautiful woman pumping gas, swooning you off your feet, even though it was such a brief encounter. I always play this when I’m feeling whimsical.
My Morning Jacket - Gideon: The best live band today doing the best live version of the best song to do live. Got it? Good.
Kamelot - Farewell: The song to rock out with your … err, well, yeah, you get it. When noone’s looking, I pretend I have long hair again and bring out the metal in me to bang my head to this song.
Band of Horses - Funeral: It starts off soft and mellow and then wails into an angry anthem, with the lead singer’s strong voice carrying you into the song.
The Postal Service - Such Great Heights: A timeless song that is bloody difficult to get tired of. It fuses electronica with pop so good, that it feels pretty natural, and it does it with a feel for the 80’s style of synth music.
From the radio to the internet, here’s Smashing Pumpkins new single, Tarantula. It’s off of their upcoming album, Zeitgeist, due out in July.
It is reminiscent of old school SP, as if it came off of the Gish album. This is good, in my opinion, as I didn’t really care for SP’s late albums, which had an electro-pop feel to it. Overall, I really like the single, and I’ve been a hardcore fan of SP since the Siamese Dream days. I still have my Pisces Iscariot CD, and even though it is worn to death, it still gets the occasional listen from me.
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